Loved this - really gorgeous and moving writing. Would recommend to readers of literary fiction for sure.

I enjoyed the last book I'd read by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan so I thought I'd give this one a go. On a sentence level, I really like her writing, and I think this book was really well-structured, paced etc... but it turned out The Sleep Watcher was magical realism which is possibly my least favourite genre lol. I'd still give it a solid 3.5 stars because it was a good book but not always for me!

This book mixes magical realism with reality. The writing was very good. I loved the descriptions of the location. A surprising read

I opened this book and I was lost straight away… brilliant story… fast-paced… I just love this author… 5 stars, of course.

"The Sleep Watcher" by Buchanan unfolds a psychological mystery. The story navigates intricate characters and their interconnected secrets. Buchanan's writing is atmospheric, although pacing occasionally falters. The book keeps readers engaged, unveiling layers of tension and intrigue. While not groundbreaking, it offers a solid suspenseful experience that maintains interest through its exploration of the characters' motivations and actions.

I've loved Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's previous novels (Harmless Like You and Starling Days so I requested a copy of the author's latest novel on the strength of these books. Whilst there are some thematic similarities with her previous work, unfortunately I did not enjoy The Sleep Watcher nearly as much. Perhaps I went in with the wrong expectations but this novel felt distinctly middle grade/YA in feel and failed to linger in my mind after I finished reading. Not for me!

"The Sleep Watcher" is an interesting story of a teenager who thanks to her out of body experiences witnesses acts of marital violence, her father is a perpetrator of. Sensing the end of a family life as she knows it, she attempts to hold the family together, and when she fails, she becomes a parentified child, putting herself in a role of one of her parent's carer. This decision has consequences and its aftermath becomes too much for Kit to handle.

The tone of voice that the protagonist uses is mature for a reason. The entire story is told in the present time and serves as a device to let adult Kit's partner get to know her better and make an important life decision. Therefore as readers we get glimpses of analysis of what was going on and how we should be looking at it.

Overall, it was a great, but also challenging read, in terms of topics that were explored.

I’d enjoyed both Harmless Like You and Starling Days so much that I needed no persuasion to read Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s third novel which follows a young woman looking back to the summer in which she discovered that her beloved father was not the man she thought he was.

They family has settled by the seaside where Kit’s mother is a therapist and her father does a little freelance IT work, composing songs during his insomniac nights. Towards the end of her GCSE year, Kit finds herself having strange nocturnal experiences, leaving her body and roaming the town, seeing how others live and coming to an understanding that her parents’ relationship is not what she thought it was. It’s a time that’s shaped her adult relationships and she knows she must explain herself before she asks her lover to live with her.

I was a little wary of the out-of-body device, but it works well; Kit’s story is so immersive that it never feels strained. Buchanan’s writing is both subtle and elegant, occasional poetic images sing out from the narrative, and the effects of coercion and violence, while not brutal, are made clear. Writing from an adolescent’s perspective is a difficult trick to pull off but Buchanan does it with characteristic empathy and compassion: Kit is convincing, her conflicting feelings about her father sensitively portrayed, and her story compelling.